


Trouble Sleeping

by prepare4trouble



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Insomnia, Reminiscing, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24963538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: On Lister's first night out of stasis, and Rimmer's first night as a hologram, both of them have trouble getting off to sleep.
Relationships: Dave Lister & Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	Trouble Sleeping

Lister sighed to himself and rearranged his blanket for the tenth or eleventh time, pulling it up over his shoulders and then back down to mid-chest level. He rolled over, and then back again. Nothing was comfortable, not his bed, his pillow, or the temperature of the room. He had lost track of how long he had been trying to get to sleep.

He rolled back over onto his side, and stared out into the room. “Rimmer?” he said. “You still awake, man?”

The silence from the bunk below him told him that either Rimmer was asleep, or Rimmer wanted him to think that he was asleep. Lister sighed. He gave his pillow several hard punches in an effort to flatten out some of the lumps. It had never been lumpy before. Could a pillow develop lumps over the course of three million years? He didn’t think so. Maybe it was a different pillow, one from storage. He supposed Holly might have had the skutters remake his bed before he came out of stasis.

“Rimmer?” he tried again.

He was answered by a fake snoring sound from the bottom bunk. Low and quiet, and not at all like Rimmer’s usual, high pitched and nasal snore. 

Well, that answered that. He was definitely pretending to be asleep. “I know you’re awake Rimmer. I know your snore; that’s not it.” Lister gave his pillow another thump. “Hey, can a pillow get lumpy if you leave it laying around for three million years? What’s yours like?”

There was another long silence from below him, followed by a weary sigh. “You _don’t_ know my snore,” Rimmer told him. “Because I don’t snore. You snore, Lister.”

Lister shrugged. “More than one person can snore,” he said. “Anyway, if you don’t snore, why’d you think that pretending to snore would make me think you were asleep?”

“Because…” Rimmer hesitated. “Shut up, Lister.”

Lister grinned to himself. He might be dealing with the horrifying revelation that the human race as he knew it was extinct and that he was probably the last of his kind, but at least he could still annoy Rimmer. “So, what’s your pillow like?” he asked. “Is it lumpy?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rimmer told him. “I’m dead, remember? Holograms can’t feel lumpy pillows. Or anything at all, actually.”

Right. He hadn’t forgotten, not really; he just hadn’t thought of it like that. Lister sighed, sat up in bed, pulled his legs up to his chest luggage locker style, and wrapped his arms around his knees. “I can’t sleep,” he said. 

“Yes, I noticed,” Rimmer told him.

Lister sighed. “I never had trouble sleeping before,” he said. “Never. I mean, I’ve slept in places most people would find impossible. Like this one time when I was about seventeen, I woke up after a night out, laying on top of a hedge.”

“Lister, I’m trying to sleep,” Rimmer told him.

“You know those privet hedges people have around their gardens? It was about six foot tall. I still have no idea how I got up there. Getting down wasn’t easy either.”

“Lister…” Rimmer said, warningly.

“And I slept in a luggage locker on Mimas,” Lister continued. “Six months in the tourist terminal, never once had trouble getting off to sleep. In fact, the only time I’ve ever _not_ been able to sleep is when you used to play those stupid ‘learn while you sleep’ tapes all night.”

“Lister, shut up,” Rimmer told him.

He did, for a moment. Sitting up on the bed, he glanced around their quarters. It wasn’t dark in the room. It was never completely dark anywhere on the ship; there was a constant low level of illumination maintained twenty four hours a day, emergency lighting, so that the crew would always be able to see to get where they needed to be, in the event of a catastrophe.

Somehow, Lister doubted that having a good view would have helped any of them when a disaster actually occurred. He was glad of it now though. He didn’t want to be alone in the dark.

He shivered. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said. “They’re all dead. Everyone I’ve ever known. Peterson, Kochanski, all my mates back on Earth. I always figured I’d see them again, you know? I mean, as far as they know… knew, I just disappeared on that pub crawl around London. They all probably died of old age still thinking I’d gotten so drunk I’d fallen in the river or something.”

“I doubt that,” Rimmer told him. “To be honest, I doubt they thought about you at all after a couple of years.”

Lister frowned. “Oh, great. Thanks a lot.”

“Only being honest,” Rimmer told him. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but I can’t imagine your disappearance having such an effect on their lives that they lay on their deathbeds thinking about you.”

The worst part was, Rimmer was probably right. They hadn’t been close friends. Not really. They had been the kinds of friends that he called upon when he needed someone to help him go out and get absolutely shitfaced. It didn’t matter. They were still his friends, and they were still fellow human beings. “Still, they’re all dead,” he said again, more to himself now than to Rimmer. “Everyone.”

“Yes,” Rimmer said unsympathetically. “I _am_ capable of retaining information I was told less than a day earlier, you know. You don’t have to keep banging on about it.”

Lister hugged his knees a little tighter under the blanket. He wanted to stop thinking about it, but he couldn’t. A part of him felt as though he _shouldn’t_. After all, his species had died. Something as enormous as that shouldn’t be pushed aside in his mind so he could get a few hours kip. He leaned his head back until it bumped heavily against the back of the bunk. “Come on, man.” he said “Talk to me. Distract me for a bit.”

“I _am_ talking to you,” Rimmer insisted. “Unfortunately. Look, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but can we do this in the morning? _I_ want to get to sleep, too.”

“Do holograms even need to sleep?” Lister asked.

“Of course they… we…” Rimmer broke off and hesitated. “Well, _need_? I’m not sure, actually, this is all very new to me. Want? Definitely. It’s been a rather stressful day, and I’m tired, not to mention I want to get a head start on my revision tomorrow.”

Revision? Seriously? How could he even still be thinking about… 

“Oh no! I can’t make a revision timetable,” Rimmer added, sounding suddenly distraught. “How am I supposed to revise without a revision timetable? You’ll have to make one for me. Now, I wouldn’t normally let anybody else touch my watercolours, least of all _you_ but under my strict supervision, maybe…”

“Rimmer, the whole human race is dead, doesn’t that bother you? Not even a little bit?”

There was a pause, then, “Nope. The human race wasn’t all that great, Listy. In fact, I daresay the universe is better off without them. Anyway, let me tell you, there’s more than a few people that I’m _not_ mourning right now.”

“What?” Lister asked him. He couldn't quite bring himself to believe what he was hearing.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Rimmer continued. “I mean, I’m not saying I’m glad they're dead, well not exactly. Well… okay _some_ of them I might be a teensy bit glad they’re dead. But all I’m saying is, if _I_ had to die, there’s a few people that I’m glad died too.”

Lister shook his head. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. Are you telling me there’s nobody whose death you’re secretly celebrating?”

Lister thought about it. There were one or two that he wasn’t exactly broken up over. Tim or Tom or Tony, or whatever the smeg his name was, Kochanski’s ex, who had stolen her back from him, sprung to mind, but he didn’t deserve to die. None of them had, and definitely not like that. He shook his head. “No.”

“ _Nobody_? Not even the captain? That stupid fat git that sent you to stasis?”

Lister shook his head again. “If he hadn’t done that, I’d have been awake during the accident and I’d be dead too,” he said.

“Exactly,” Rimmer told him. “What an idiot. I’m never going to forgive him for that. Never.”

“Rimmer, everyone we’ve ever known is dead, are you seriously telling me that you don’t care?”

“Everyone including _me_.”

“Yeah,” Lister frowned. “I know that.”

“Are you sure? Because you keep going on about Petersen, and Kochanski, and various people that you haven’t even spoken to since you were last on Earth, and you’ve not once expressed a single word of grief for my passing. ‘Boo hoo, everyone I knew is dead.’ How do you think _I_ feel? I’m in exactly the same boat as you, you know. Only _I’m_ dead too, Lister. I woke up this morning to find out that I died three million years ago, and you’re just ‘me, me, me’. Stop being so selfish.”

Lister opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. He wasn’t going to get into that discussion again. Yes, Rimmer was dead, but the hologram of Rimmer was very much still there, which to Lister’s mind meant that it wasn’t the same thing. Even if he would have mourned Rimmer -- and he liked to think that he would have, a bit -- he certainly couldn’t do it while Rimmer himself was sitting in the bunk below him, complaining about being dead.

But on the other hand, he supposed that to Rimmer, the situation must feel very different. Lister couldn’t even begin to imagine what it might be like to find out that you were dead. The whole thing just wouldn’t compute in his head. Suddenly, he felt a very unexpected, and very unwelcome, stab of sympathy for his bunkmate.

“Holly,” said Lister. “Lights.”

Wordlessly, he dropped down from the top bunk, taking the blanket with him, and landed barefoot on the cold floor below. He sat down at the table, facing Rimmer. “Okay,” he said. “I get that it sucks. I’m sorry you’re dead too, Rimmer.”

“Well you don’t seem very sorry,” Rimmer told him.

Lister rested his elbows on the table and placed his head in his hands. He was tired, he was mourning not only the human race, but also the life that _he_ had been denied; the family he had been going to build with Kochanski, the farm on Fiji, the future he had imagined for himself. In the blink of an eye -- or what felt like the blink of an eye -- it was all gone. And now Rimmer wanted him to put on a show of grief for him too.

He just didn’t have the energy right now. “Why don’t you read those books Holly gave you?” he suggested. Holly had provided Rimmer with a series of books -- pamphlets really -- in holographic form, on the subject of how to cope with the fact of your own death.

Rimmer screwed up his face in distaste. “They won’t help,” he said.

“They might. You don’t know ‘til you try.” 

“I _did_ try, you gimboid,” Rimmer told him. “They’re nonsense. Full of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo about the nature of being. ‘I think I’m thinking, therefore… something something something’. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m almost a hundred percent certain that whoever wrote them wasn’t dead. It’s ridiculous, getting a living person to try and explain death to the dead. That’s just typical of the living, Lister. Absolutely typical.”

Lister shrugged. “Well, if he wasn’t dead when he wrote it, he is now.”

Rimmer smiled at that. Actually smiled. “Good,” he said. “Serves him right.”

Sometimes, Lister thought there was something very wrong with Rimmer. Actually, no, he thought that most of the time. At this particular moment in time though, he was still too preoccupied with everything else to think too hard about it. He slumped in his seat.

“Look,” Rimmer said, “If you’re having trouble sleeping, why don’t you get up and find something to do? Laying there thinking about it isn’t going to help, is it?”

Lister sighed. Technically, he supposed Rimmer was right. “I’m too tired,” he said. “Just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean I don’t need to. Anyway, what is there to do?” He didn’t think Rimmer would appreciate him playing his guitar. Besides, it would be hideously out of tune after three million years. It was probably going to need restringing.

“You could get started on tomorrow's tasks,” Rimmer suggested.

“Tasks? What tasks?”

“The list of tasks I’ve compiled for you,” Rimmer explained.” I haven’t been able to write it down, of course, but it’s all in here.” He tapped his temple to indicate the list held within his head. “The ship hasn’t been properly serviced for three million years, I think it might need a once-over. Don’t you?”

Lister stared at him, trying to work out whether Rimmer was joking. The entire time he had known him, he had heard Rimmer try to make exactly one joke, and it hadn’t been funny. No, he decided, this wasn’t a joke. Rimmer wouldn’t joke about maintenance. “Rimmer,” he asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Me? What’s wrong with _you_? Are you seriously telling me that you could stand to live out the rest of your life on a ship filled with badly stocked vending machines?”

“Yes, of course I…” Lister broke off suddenly. “Wait. What?”

Rimmer nodded in a self-satisfied looking way. “Yes, didn’t think of that, did you? All those snacks you like to hoover up between curries. Everything will be out of date. So far out of date in fact, that it probably disintegrated to dust eons ago. We need to replace it with things from storage, they will have been preserved, so…”

“No,” Lister shook his head. “I mean, the rest of my life? You really don’t think we’re going to make it home?”

Rimmer froze. Slowly, the satisfied smirk on his face faded away to be replaced by guilt. He sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean to say that. It just… slipped out.”

“But you don’t, do you?”

“Well…” Lister could almost track the thoughts going through Rimmer’s head as his expression morphed from ‘oops, I shouldn’t have said that’, to ‘maybe I can convince him it was a joke’, to ‘let’s just drop the pretence and be honest’, settling finally on something between the two. “Honestly? No. But that doesn’t mean anything. If you’d asked me before I died If I ever thought we’d end up in this situation, I’d have said no to that, too.”

Would anybody have banked on this particular scenario? Somehow, Lister doubted it. He decided to drop the subject; it wasn’t like he particularly wanted to dwell for too long on his chances of getting home, or he might start to come around to Rimmer’s way of thinking. “Yeah, fair point,” he said, and stifled a yawn.

“You need to sleep,” Rimmer told him. “Listen…” he hesitated as though he were mulling something over. “I tell you what, how about we hold off on the vending machines for tomorrow; take a personal day? We’ve both had a bit of a shock to the system. It might be good to take a bit of time.”

Lister nodded. That sounded like an excellent idea. Not that he had been planning on restocking the vending machines tomorrow anyway, but at least now he wouldn’t have to contend with Rimmer nagging him about it. “Good idea,” he agreed.

“And Lister, look,” Rimmer added. “I know things seem pretty grim right now.”

Lister nodded, and waited for the other half of that sentence. When it didn’t come, he nodded again. “But?” he said.

Rimmer frowned. “But what?”

“It sounded like there was going to be more to that. You know, like, ‘I know things suck right now but they’ll get better,’ that kinda thing.”

“Well, maybe they will,” Rimmer told him. “I mean, if nothing else, I suppose we’ll probably get used to it.” He shuddered. “What a horrible thought.”

Rimmer was terrible at this. Lister sighed, got to his feet and began to head back to bed. Even if he couldn’t sleep, he would probably get more rest laying staring at the ceiling than he would sitting there looking at Rimmer.

“Oh, Lister,” Rimmer said.

He paused.

“You can have my pillow if you want.”

“What?”

“You said earlier that yours was lumpy, I don’t know if mine will be any better, but swap them and give it a go, if you like. It’s not like it’s doing me any good anyway.”

Lister hesitated, caught off guard by what almost seemed like a kind gesture. “Okay, thanks,” he said. It was worth a try.

“And Lister,” Rimmer added as he climbed back into his bunk. 

Lister grunted a reply as he arranged his blanket over his body and placed his head on what actually was a much more comfortable pillow.

“Things _will_ get better,” Rimmer assured him. 

“You think?” Lister asked.

“Oh yes, absolutely,” Rimmer said. “After all, they couldn't _possibly_ get any worse.”

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ ♥ Comments and kudos are loved and cherished ♥ ♥


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